Is a Trump Doctrine Taking Shape?

US President Donald Trump’s transactional approach to multinational agreements such as the Paris climate accord is very different from that of his predecessors. Whereas previous presidents have viewed international accords in the context of broader US trade and security strategy, Trump looks at them in isolation.

STANFORD – US President Donald Trump’s transactional approach to multinational agreements is very different from that of his predecessors. Whereas previous presidents have viewed international accords in the context of broader US trade and security strategy, Trump looks at them in isolation. To his mind, many agreements to which the US is a signatory are poorly negotiated, overly burdensome, or outdated and ill-suited for changing economic and security conditions.

Upon taking office, Trump pulled the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an agreement among 12 Pacific Rim countries that would have created the world’s largest free-trade zone. But he says he will negotiate better bilateral treaties with those and other countries. And, after hearing from the leaders of Canada and Mexico, he has opted for “renegotiating” the North American Free Trade Agreement, rather than scuttling it entirely, as he had promised during his campaign.

More recently, on his first presidential trip abroad, Trump took some good first steps in the Middle East. But in a speech to NATO leaders, he removed a line that would have explicitly reaffirmed the US’s commitment to collective defense under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, rattling allies, and apparently even some of his top advisers. (More recently, he finally voiced support for the clause).

Michael J. Boskin is Professor of Economics at Stanford University and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was Chairman of George H. W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1989 to 1993, and headed the so-called Boskin Commission, a congressional advisory body that highlighted errors in official US inflation estimates.

Prof. Boskin sounds almost like a Trump's surrogate : "on his first presidential trip abroad, Trump took some good first steps in the Middle East" ̣

Let's look at those so-called "some good first steps":

- Trump announced the sale of military equipment worth $110bn to Saudi Arabia: "That was a tremendous day. Tremendous investments in the United States. Hundreds of billions of dollars of investments into the United States and jobs, jobs, jobs".

Problem is the arms deal is fake news
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2017/06/05/the-110-billion-arms-deal-to-saudi-arabia-is-fake-news/amp/

- Trump's further tilt towards Saudi Arabia and the Sunnis, and against Iran and the Shias has not smoothed but increased the tensions in the Gulf: " So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism ! "
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/872084870620520448?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Ftime.com%2F4807216%2Fdonald-trump-twitter-qatar-terrorism%2F

Are these two statements conflicting : first - "Whereas previous presidents have viewed international accords in the context of broader US trade and security strategy, Trump looks at them in isolation. "; then - "Instead, we should look at Trump’s own analysis of existing agreements in the context of his views on issues such as national security and working-class jobs and incomes."

One needs to look no further than Trumpcare to see whether Trump cares about the working class.

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PS OnPoint

The Mueller report in America, along with reports of interference in this week’s European Parliament election, has laid bare the lengths to which Russia will go to undermine Western democracies. But whether Westerners have fully awoken to the threat is an open question.

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